Trump TV would end up in the trash heap of Trump Steaks, Trump Airlines, Trump Water, and other ill-conceived Trump ventures.

No, Donald Trump’s campaign is not a political Rube Goldberg contraption designed to launch a television network.

While the GOP nominee might want a television platform of his own, the chances of him successfully launching one are infinitesimally small. He has a better shot at occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2017 than becoming even a blip on the cable news radar.

The theory being put forth is that Trump, with an increased profile from his presidential campaign, will launch a channel to compete with Fox News for a conservative audience. This would mean succeeding where many others have failed.

Glenn Beck’s radio show attracts an audience in the millions, and he proved the ability to draw a large television audience while on Fox News. But his network, The Blaze, has floundered since its founding.

While Oprah and Glenn Beck both have a history broadcasting daily shows, Donald Trump barely makes an effort to take the elevator down to the satellite chair in Trump Tower, much less drive a few blocks to the studios of every major network for interviews. Is he really going to put himself through the grind of hosting a show every weekday?

Furthermore, the cable environment is significantly different than in the late 1990s, when both Fox News and MSNBC launched. At the time CNN was the only established network. MSNBC had the advantage of both NBC and Microsoft behind it, while Fox News had Rupert Murdoch’s empire invested in its success, if for no other reason than to beat rival Ted Turner.

Internet news was still in its nascent stage and nobody was cutting the cord, meaning that cable companies were willing to pay high fees to carry programming.

Today, NBC and News Corp/21st Century Fox could leverage the other cable properties they own to create bundled deals for cable subscribers that can drive revenue, but even cable monolith ESPN is “bleeding subscribers” and their fees.

Considering the level of public animosity towards Trump’s brand, along with an unproven broadcasting track record, it is doubtful major cable carriers such as Comcast or Time Warner would carry Trump News, much less pay high per-subscriber fees.

Without this revenue, a new channel would be reliant on advertising. Except we’ve seen major companies like Macy’s flee from business relationships with the GOP nominee, and they would be unlikely to return, leaving them seeking advertising dollars from lesser brands with less advertising money.

Without top level advertisers or cable carry fees, the network’s core business model would be in doubt.

What about an online network driven by a subscription model? Once again, others with greater track records of success, namely Beck, have failed at the online subscription model. This model has demonstrated the ability to provide a moderate amount of revenue for some individuals with podcasts and streaming shows, but has never been proven to be sustainable at a larger scale. (We aren’t even comparing Trump to the abject failure of Sarah Palin’s network.)

The streaming news model also has not worked for large media companies, be it Huff Post Live or MSNBC Shift. There is no proven ability to garner an audience online.

The one possibility that exists is for Trump to tie his brand to an existing station, such as the One America News Network. OANN was founded as a conservative alternative to Fox News and is carried on several satellite and cable systems.

The network could offer Trump a licensing deal that ties him to the channel. But would Trump want to commit himself to exclusivity with a low-rating channel? Also, the success of this venture would be contingent on the ability to steal chunks of Fox News’s ratings, simply splitting an already aging demographic.

Looking at the possibilities for Trump TV, while it’s impossible to ever predict what Trump is thinking, at best it would end up in the trash heap of Trump Steaks, Trump Airlines, Trump Water, and other ill-conceived Trump ventures.

Progressives should stop fretting about it and focus on winning the 2016 election.